“Ukraine on the way to the EU” – online training course launched to train European integration and negotiations specialists

“Ukraine on the way to the EU,” free educational online course, was created to improve the quality of human and managerial capital in Ukraine and promote the successful integration of Ukraine into the EU. It will launch on August 22, 2023 on Prometheus open educational platform. The course is based on live lectures by leading European and Ukrainian experts in various fields held at intellectual meetings “ANTS European Studies.”

During the presentation of the course at BrainHub, country’s main discussion platform at Media Center Ukraine – Ukrinform, Vasyl Sehin, Executive Director of the National Interests Advocacy Network “ANTS” NGO, emphasized the importance of training specialists who will be involved in Ukraine’s European integration.

“Ukraine is approaching the opening of the negotiation process with the EU. Analyzing the experience of other states that have gone this path, there are actually thousands of specialists, even narrow-profile ones in various fields. And the better these specialists will be trained, the more effectively Ukraine will be able to defend its interests in the negotiations with the European Union. That is, what kind quotas there will be and where, in what sequence we will implement EU technical standards so that it does not harm our producers, how our products will be exported, and what will be developed as a priority – without these specialists, the conditions that, above all, benefit EU countries will be imposed on us,” he explained.

In turn, Olena Sas, ANTS Coordinator of the European Studies, expressed her confidence that thousands of people will be able to take the course.

She explained that the course covers seven topics and correspondingly consists of seven modules and over 40 lectures. The instructors of the course include two-time Prime Minister of Lithuania, MEP Andrius Kubilius, ex-Minister of Defense of Lithuania, MEP Rasa Jukneviciene, Ukrainian top manager for innovation Dmytro Shymkiv and many others.

The active part of the course, during which learners will be able to communicate, study and get a certificate, will last three months. But all course materials will be available afterwards. The recommended duration of the course is four weeks

“We have beta tested it, one can listen to more than 40 lectures on seven modules in four weeks in a relaxed mode, learn the material, and take a test consisting of only 35 questions. It is enough to answer 60% of the questions correctly to receive a certificate,” Olena Sas said.

The goal is to form groups out of the people who passed the course. These teams will be involved in the European integration and negotiations. In addition, the graduates of the NGO’s course “Network for the Protection of the Interests of ANTS” will be worked with some more to select those who will go on a trip to Brussels.

“This is a type of motivation. We will do some work with the people who passed our course, select them for further work with our organization. This applies not only to a trip to Brussels. This is actually the work to integrate these people into certain Ukrainian agencies so that they can then get involved both in the process before the accession and after it, in bureaucratic structures within the framework of our integration into the European Union. There must be people who understand what it is and actually do this work with their hands. These can be MEP assistants or MEPs themselves. We have very ambitious goals. This is not education, but enlightenment, and it all starts from here,” Olena Sas concluded.

As reported, on June 23, 2022, Ukraine acquired the official status of a EU candidate country. The decision was made by the European Council at the meeting of the heads of states and governments of 27 EU member states on June 23-24 in Brussels. Therefore, our state has specific obligations to prepare for joining the EU.

BrainHub is the country’s main discussion platform created by Media Center Ukraine – Ukrinform. It brings together experts from the state and civil society sectors. BrainHub hosts intellectual discussions around the issues of the post-war reconstruction of Ukraine. It’s the birthplace of the best ideas that will become the foundation for the road map of Ukraine’s reconstruction in all sectors: economy, infrastructure, education, agriculture, security, digital, etc.

Read more: https://mediacenter.org.ua/news